It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New
York City’s Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept telling the nurses, was just behind him, wielding a baseball
bat.

Before hospital staff realized how sick he was—the alcohol-induced hallucination was just a symptom—the man died. So did another holiday
partygoer. And another. As dusk fell on Christmas, the hospital staff tallied up more than 60 people made desperately ill by alcohol and eight dead
from it. Within the next two days, yet another 23 people died in the city from celebrating the season.

Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often
made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely
different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of
enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold
as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal
poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Bureaucrats are no different today. Do not mistake the passage of time for a change in bureaucratic mindsets. Today they go about killing you by
monopolizing
drugs through patents and preventing competition through
licensing, but the effects are still the same. You die while they profit.

I apologize that this article has to come from Slate magazine, which makes disgusting excuses for State tyranny on a regular basis. For example,
consider the Orwellian logic it takes to write this sentence:

Poisonous alcohol still kills—16 people died just this month after drinking lethal booze in Indonesia, where bootleggers make their own brews to
avoid steep taxes—but that’s due to unscrupulous businessmen rather than government order.

Do the writers at Slate have more than one logic cell in their brain? Doubtful.

But setting the obvious Orwellian editorializing aside, the meat of the article gets at the true nature of how State bureaucrats regard the public.
The public to the State is as a cow is to a farmer. A farmer would have no problems slaughtering a cow that he disapproved of in some way. A farmer
would have no problems killing a cow to rid the herd of a disease. A farmer does not have compassion for a cow. A farmer uses the cow to sustain
his lively hood. The farmer does not tolerate insolence from a cow and will punish it through the use of cattle prods [tasers], whips [batons], and
electric fences [prisons] in order to make the cow do his bidding.

If the cow could elect which farmer beat it into submission, does that make the cow free?

Listen to economist/historian Robert Higgs argue against The Leviathan

I really don't know how people with a pair of eyes and ears can still have "hope" that these soulless politicians will actually do some good for
them and country.

Cigarettes kill how many per year?

Worldwide, tobacco use causes more than 5 million deaths per year, and current trends show that tobacco use will cause more than 8 million deaths
annually by 2030.

That's Holocaust kind of numbers! I smoke and have for 20 years now, but even I can't ignore these numbers.
3000 people on 9/11.... "OMG look how many people the terrorists killed folks, 3000 people! Let's spend billions fighting about 200 people
scattered across the middle east!"

It's a joke and always has been. They want us to pay attention to the numbers that help their agenda.

Then there's the people I hear who say, "If it was poison or bad for us, they wouldn't advertise it on TV.".... or "If it made us sick, they'd
take it off the market."
No, they leave things available on the market until the lawyers suggest pulling the products for liability issues. A few 100 people dying over a
product is expected losses and perfectly acceptable to these psychopaths.

Well they poisoned the alcohol back then, and they are poisoning the cigarettes now too. The American cigarettes have to have that fire safety
chemical added to them, and as the years have gone by cigarettes have had more chemicals added to them for whatever reasons.

I smoke European cigarettes and will not smoke cigarettes made in the USA. People are having a lot of lung and blood pressure issues because of all
these unnecessary chemical additives, same with foods, same with Fluoridated water, they are making everything "we choose to consume" toxic.

Where's the outcry for toxic Fluoride in the water? Or the harm these foods are doing to children? What about the suicides from pharmaceuticals in
children? I'm just saying they want our attention focused on the numbers they want us to pay attention to.

Umm, if it was moonshine, yes it can make you sick. My aunt and I went to see the Nomads last year. The nomads I'm referring to are a bunch of
hillbillies in the back hills. They were like Crystal Norris's family in True Blood, I can't make this up. Everybody was drinking moonshine and
whatever, it was fun and all until somebody starting vomiting and passed out.

Then before I knew it, everybody was sick as a dog. It was unnerving. Me and my Aunt didn't drink anything, we just came up to the woods to basically
talk to the Nomads. I heard three people died from one of the girls alone.......so moonshine has been known to blind people, make you sick and if you
light that on fire........let's just say that **** is highly combustible.

The government wasn't there, and yes I was highly upset about losing Jimmy, Hazelle and Monroe.........

Originally posted by Heartisblack
Umm, if it was moonshine, yes it can make you sick.

It wasn't moonshine. It was industrial-grade alcohol, never meant for human consumption in the first place, because it killed you if you drank it.
This was a poorly thought out scare tactic. It resulted in the deaths of thousands, though thousands were already dying from the industrial
alcohol.

Lets not make the mistake of equating people doing harm to themselves with the State doing intentional harm to its citizens.

While smoking may be deadly, the State has no right to tell private citizens what they may or may not consume; even if what those citizens decide to
consume is poisonous to their own health.

edit on 31-8-2011 by mnemeth1 because: (no reason given)

Up until what point? Do you think my parents wanted to be locked in the back seat of a car with no a/c... My grandparents chain smoking up front with
their windows cracked? I think not... After my Mom almost died of asthma it's fact over opinion. Same goes with neighbors two units down from me.
First off, they smoke some potent skunk, so they're not all together there at times... Secondly, it's an accident waiting to happen. We have dry
bamboo shoots and shrubs that are the targets for their cigarette buttes. I'm in Texas... Care to turn on the news? Furthermore, I don't want smoke
permeating my clothes, furniture, and lungs. I certainly don't want my possessions ablaze.

The State has the right to pass Laws for the common good. I dare say to prevent idiocrasies from getting the best of us. Don't confuse yourself...
Common sense prevails or we simply perish. History and the loss of life should be your main indicators.

Originally posted by Americanist
Up until what point? Do you think my parents wanted to be locked in the back seat of a car with no a/c... My grandparents chain smoking up front with
their windows cracked? I think not... After my Mom almost died of asthma it's fact over opinion. Same goes with neighbors two units down from me.
First off, they smoke some potent skunk, so they're not all together there at times... Secondly, it's an accident waiting to happen. We have dry
bamboo shoots and shrubs that are the targets for their cigarette buttes. I'm in Texas... Care to turn on the news? Furthermore, I don't want smoke
permeating my clothes, furniture, and lungs. I certainly don't want my possessions ablaze.

The State has the right to pass Laws for the common good. I dare say to prevent idiocrasies from getting the best of us. Don't confuse yourself...
Common sense prevails or we simply perish. History and the loss of life should be your main indicators.

edit on 31-8-2011 by Americanist
because: (no reason given)

If someone causes harm to others, they can sue for damages in a civil court.

Using violence to prevent people from hurting themselves is oxymoronic.

The best pain med you can get out of your doctor
MOST of the time is Acetaminophen mixed with codeine.
Acetaminophen is toxic to your liver, and the FDAs advisory panel
said that 2000mg per day (thats 4 500mg pills) is enough to cause
fatal liver failure in some individuals.
500 americans die every year from acetaminophen poisoning,many more
have liver damage.

why dont they just prescribe codeine? Because they want
to kill druggies,people who will use the Tylenol 3 mixed with codeine
to get high.
Codeine is perfectly safe, though addictive.

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